Get your Radiohead fix a day early: New video for "Lotus"

Just found this: A crazy little video for "Lotus" off of the new Radiohead, which, again, drops tomorrow.
The song is pretty digital. Sounds a little more in line with Kid A to me on first listen. But who cares? This is new Radiohead!

That's some freaky boogie, Mr. Yorke.

Telekinesis' nice new piece of power pop

Telekinesis' Lerner

Telekinesis, the one-man band of Michael Benjamin Lerner, released a new record this week, 12 Desperate Straight Lines. The good news for fans is that it's more of the same power pop that made Lerner's debut so enjoyable.

Lerner's an interesting guy. He eschews the star-wattage most songwriters shoot for at the front of the stage. He's primarily a drummer, one who stays behind the kit when he hits the road with a backing band -- bassist Jason Narducy and guitarist Cody Votolato.

The position -- the lack of swagger -- fits with his music. Lerner's music is power pop seemingly made by the shy guy you never new had it in him. His lyrics aren't complicated, just plaintive and personal. He's not above a slow, sappy turn about lost love, but he never wallows for long. Most of 12 Desperate Straight Lines is up-beat stuff. It's a near pitch-perfect balance between the "Blue Album" Weezer and Summerteeth Wilco. It's straight ahead power pop which is not afraid to get loud or to get quiet, when needed.

At his best, Lerner is melodic and fun. He's not the kind of musician blazing any new trails in sound or inventing new forms of song craft. But he does power pop about as well as anyone else. Like the self-titled debut, also on Merge records, 12 Desperate Straight Lines, is well-composed, power pop that might actually be just the tonic needed by anyone who feels Weezer left an irreparable hole in the fabric of American music by becoming one of the worst bands in the world.

Telekinesis will play Johnny Brenda's in Philly on March 11. Check them out on Merge here.

What a Valentine! Radiohead announces new album for this Saturday

The King of Limbs: New one from Radiohead!

There's no better way to be musically redeemed from this weekend's Grammys debacle than the announcement that the worlds greatest rock band will release a new record, The King of Limbs,  this weekend.

Yup. The band had said it would release new material this year, but I don't think anyone expected it to be so soon.

From what little I've read, the band recorded the record with Nigel Godrich and spent time at their home studio in Oxford and another studio in L.A.

Pre-orders are being taken at on the band's website here. Unlike In Rainbows, there won't be a choose-your-own-price option. An MP3 digital version will be $9. A WAV file version is $14. There's also an option to get a "Newspaper" edition, you get one of the electronic versions plus a CD and double vinyl versions with lots of extra artwork.

I can't wait to get this record.

Grammys: Is there anything left to care about?

If the Grammy's were worth it, The Black Keys
would be up for best rock record.

This weekend, CBS will air that great big musical farce we call The 53rd annual Grammy Awards. It is a glitzy, silly show that seems to get more and more cosmically distant from actual music making with every passing year.

So out of touch are the Grammys when it comes to rock that it's getting difficult to distinguish Grammy nominees from their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame counterparts. Consider the nominees for "Best Solo Rock Performance": Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, Robert Plant, Neal Young and John Mayer. If not for Mayer, you'd swear you were looking at a list from 1973.

With all the mewling and caterwauling about the death of the music industry and the culpability of file sharing in its demise, The industry fails to see its own role in all the destruction. It seems oblivious to the fact that it has been completely ineffective at promoting new and interesting music for more than 20 years now (a generous estimate) and nowhere is the evidence of the growing gap between the music industry and the music listening public more evident than at the Grammys.

Waking up to new material from The Veils

I don't know about you, but a lot of the new releases in January have put me to sleep. Iron and Wine, The Decemberists, yes, even destroyer... Too sleepy.
Cake put out what must be its 15th album of songs that all sound just like "The Distance" and indie fans were rejoicing over a record by Chicago popsters The Smith Westerns.

In fact January has been so tired that on the album charts, The Decemberists displaced Cake last as the number one record in the country according to Billboard. That's right. The number one record title actually belonged to Cake...  The only thing this could mean is that the only people actually paying for music anymore are Gen Xers whose tastes stopped evolving in 1995.

I don't know. I like my rock to rock. I like to hear movement. Long-haired bearded dudes on acoustic guitars -- I'm just not in the mood for you.

More fanfare for the downfall of the music biz

Interesting story in the New York Times today about the fizzling music biz. Seems Apple iTunes sales are not making up for billions of dollars in lost CD revenue.

In th piece, titled Music Industry Braces for the Unthinkable, analysts see digital music sales as coming to a halt. From the story:

In each of the past two years, the rate of increase in digital revenue has approximately halved. If that trend continues, digital sales could top out at less than $5 billion this year, about a third of the overall music market but many billions of dollars short of the amount needed to replace long-gone sales of compact discs.

"Music’s first digital decade is behind us and what do we have?" said Mark Mulligan, an analyst at Forrester Research. “Not a lot of progress.”

Gorillaz and the future of the mobile app electro-music sketchbook

This fall, while Damon Albarn was on a U.S. tour with his animated super group The Gorillaz, he was experimenting with his new iPad and boldly blazing a new trail in music making.

Check out a video from the new record here.

With a dozen or so mobile apps -- from software emulators of the Korg Electribe drum machine to a goofy app that translates line drawings into sound -- Albarn composed 15 songs (or 14 songs and one bizarre yodeling track) that he mastered and released as a free Gorillaz album, The Fall, available on the Gorillaz website. (Albarn lists the apps he used to create the album here, too)

The result -- the first record I've heard of done entirely on a single mobile device --  is an album that is much smaller scale than a regular Gorillaz affair. There's not a revolving cast of special guests -- no De La Soul or Snoop Dog -- though one song features Bobby Womack singing and playing guitar.

There are other minimal contributions from a few guest musicians -- Damon's pals Mick Jones and Paul Simonon (both of the Clash, in case you don't know) add guitar and bass to a couple tracks* -- but The Fall maintains a much more intimate feel. Mostly, it's Albarn's voice and his iPad.